d-

Rating: 2/10 (2 November 2015)

i wanted to love this movie, but was disappointed as many other reviewers were. however, it's important to note that not every movie will be a masterpiece and that's okay. there were a lot of plays performed before films, but try to name anyone other than homer or Shakespeare who wrote anything. it's basically the same issue today. that's not to say that formulaic movies are a terrible thing, but i felt that this did not even follow it's own formula. things just happened that did not naturally lead to the other, and i did not connect with the characters although the actors were good with what they had to work with. rather than just complain for the sake of it, here are some ideas for how it could have been improved: the death of the brother should have been way more suspenseful and meaningful. it just kinda happened and then did not really add anything to the story. it's not like it added an element of danger to the kaiju, because it happened too quick to be emotionally engaging. raleigh should have used that experience to want to fight those kaiju and seek revenge or something, but it barely got mentioned beyond the beginning.
-they could have dropped the entire plot of them trying to get rid of the jaeger program, and raleigh did not need to be working on the wall and convinced to come back. i did not feel any suspense about that and it totally did not add anything to the story. maybe instead, he could have been in a coma for that 5 years after the big fight, and come back to see everything changed etc. if you did want the government shutdown to be a big deal, make it worse: significant characters die because there's no jaegers to fight kaiju, they have to rebel and sneak the jaegers out, etc. the kaiju danger definitely should have been drawn out and dramatized more. it just seemed like "the kaiju are bad, now they're really bad, now they're really really bad." without adding any real depth to the antagonistic forces, simply multiplying numbers doesn't make the audience care.
-for that matter, and maybe i missed this which again shows how poorly plotted this was, what did the kaiju even want? why were they here in the first place, and why wasn't that dramatized more? if kaiju are your villain, i should definitely know what their goal is, but they just kinda showed up. even the jaws shark seemed like he had a twisted sadism, so i'm not asking for shakespearean villains. it just seemed really random and it would have been cool if they needed something from our world or something.
-if you have a $190 million budget, please don't make the fights in the dark where i can barely see what is happening. it looked so cool but it was way too fast and dark for me to tell who was fighting who. i mean at least have different color schemes so the jaegers and the kaiju contrast. but if you make 1 dark blue and 1 dark green and have them fight at 2 am in the mist, i'm frustrated and bored because i can't see. i feel like they probably wanted it to "look different" than other similar movies like transformers, and so they darkened it to the detriment of the film.
the neural drifting concept was super cool, but i feel it wasn't nearly developed enough. there should have been a major obstacle due to something sinister in the raleigh or mako (his partner)'s subecauseonscious mind or something, beyond the minor vignette where you see her family was killed by kaiju as a kid. that should have contributed to some type of character development as it relates to the current story, not just dumb back story.
-the selfless actions of the characters at the end were meaningless because they were never selfish at the beginning, so they did not learn anything or go through an arc. there literally was no hero's journey because he was basically heroic at the beginning. what's the point of that? overall i just found it odd i was so bored.
this movie had so much potential. it wasn't horrible, i just feel like they could have done way better.